Sharmistha Ray pieces together a picture of Kavas Bharucha (1947-2007), one of India’s few discerning collectors of Modern and Contemporary art.
Kavas Jamshed Bharucha’s passion for collecting Indian art began in the early 1970s. Bharucha, a qualified Chartered Accountant from the U.K., joined Colour-Chem Ltd. in Mumbai after he returned from England in 1972. Soon after his return, his close friend Mehroo Jeejeebhoy encouraged him to buy two paintings by K. H. Ara from the Artists’ Center above Jehangir Art Gallery at, what was then, the exorbitant price of Rs. 200 each. The acquisitions sparked off a serious addiction that took over the rest of Bharucha’s life: when Bharucha passed away unexpectedly in August 2007 at the age of 59, he left behind an impressive collection of Modern and Contemporary Indian art of over 600 paintings, watercolours, sculptures and artists’ books.
In his early years as a collector, Bharucha just bought what he liked. He was a rare aesthete for whom art was a matter of personal taste rather than popular opinion. In 1978, a chance encounter with Kali Pundole, the legendary founder of Pundole Art Gallery, developed into a profound friendship between the two men. Pundole introduced Bharucha to the works of the Progressive Artists’ Group, including those of the collective’s principal founder, M. F. Husain. Together with his wife, Khorshed, Bharucha bought their first M. F. Husain painting from Pundole the same year. The medium-sized painting depicts a harmonium player captured in the throes of making music. Behind him stands a muse. The expressive lines, the impasto brushwork and the application of strong primary colours are typical of the Modern master. The canvas still adorns a wall of the Bharuchas’ drawing room.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Bharucha collected the works of other leading Modern artists such as F. N. Souza, K.G. Subramanyan, Manjit Bawa, Laxma Goud, Krishen Khanna and Ram Kumar. During this period, Bharucha acquired works furiously and with an element of self-professed delirium. By Khorshed’s admission, they were never a wealthy couple. Yet, at a time when shares were considered solid investment options, Bharucha ploughed his money into art. “He collected with a passion despite limited resources,” says Geetha Mehra of Sakshi Gallery. “It was a compulsion for him.”
If Bharucha couldn’t afford the paintings of an artist he wanted to buy, he would get works on paper by the artist. This was certainly the case with Arpita Singh who was one Bharucha’s firm favourites. At the time of his death, Bharucha owned twenty-two watercolours by the Delhi-based figurative artist. Thanks to this purchasing pattern, Bharucha’s collection has a works-on-paper slant. “Of course there is the odd canvas in his collection,” continues Mehra, “but he was really a collector of works on paper.”
For Bharucha, no artist could achieve the stature of Jogen Chowdhury. He owned over fifty crosshatches, pastels and other works by Chowdhury including the celebrated Yogi and the Dancer. This ‘crosshatch’ work on imperial-sized paper, depicts an elderly male ascetic, sitting cross-legged and in deep meditation while a young, full-bosomed female dancer unleashes her seductive charms, hoping to interrupt his reverie. Even though Chowdhury eclipsed all artists of his generation in Bharucha’s eyes, the collector worried that commercialism was spurring the artist to create works not worthy of his genius. Yet, for him, a top quality Chowdhury work was always worth pursuing – at any point. “Buying art for me is like pursuing an attractive woman,” Bharucha had once quipped. “The chase is as enjoyable as the prize!”
In the 2000s, Bharucha shifted his focus from the Moderns to the Contemporaries. This was partly because he felt invigorated by the dynamism of the younger generation, but it was also true that the new price-levels established for the Moderns made it difficult for Bharucha to continue collecting their works with the same speed as before. Among the established Contemporary artists, Bharucha had special admiration for Atul Dodiya, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Nalini Malani, Nilima Sheikh and Sudhir Patwardhan. Bharucha was an open-minded collector who also purchased works by unknown and emerging talents. His only compass was his own finely trained eye and the recommendations of the few art dealers he trusted. According to Pratiti Sarkar of CIMA Art Gallery in Kolkata, who knew Bharucha well, he was an important collector to be commended “not only for his eye, but also because he understood that with art, the heart rules the head.”
One of Bharucha’s favourite works was a painting by Sudhir Patwardhan, which hangs in his dining room to this very day. This deceptively simple work is of a young, bare-chested man leaning with arms crossed over a balcony. The shadow of a metal post casts a vertical shadow along his face and chest. The figure is posited in a minimalist framework of lines and planes, creating an atmosphere of quietude and repose. In spirit, it recalls Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (c. 1818), where a man stands on a cliff, with his back to us (we don’t see his face) and beholds a vast landscape in front of him. Similarly, in Patwardhan’s painting, the man’s face, obscured as it is by shadow, renders him an anonymous figure.
The painting, like Friedrich’s, is a metaphor for solitary soul-searching, albeit situated in an urban landscape.
Bharucha fostered warm relationships with most of India’s leading gallerists and dealers, although he mainly sought guidance from Shireen Gandhy of Gallery Chemould and Geetha Mehra when he first started collecting Contemporary art. These relationships were of key importance to Bharucha; because of them, he was always offered the first pick of a new consignment and, on top of that, allowed generous installment plans for paying for works. Bharucha’s single-minded commitment and passion, in conjunction with these enduring friendships, allowed him to build up one of the most significant collections of Indian art. Although he was an impulsive buyer, Bharucha had a refined sense of what he wanted, how to get it and how it fit into his collection. “He valued a work for what it was,” confirmed Gandhy, “and yet, he was clear about whether or not it had a place in his own collection.”
As a patron of the arts, Bharucha also nurtured close ties with many of the artists he collected, often hosting dinners for them at his home in Malabar Hill. “Once one develops an understanding of what is good and suited to one’s personality, one must make the effort to build a personal relationship with the artist,” he said. Bharucha believed that gaining insights into artists’ lives allowed him to understand the complexities within their practices and, ultimately, their potential for artistic growth. “Good and bad art cannot be distinguished in a few sentences,” Bharucha remarked. “Art follows a slow course of evolution.” Even though Bharucha shared a close association with many of the artists he collected, he always acquired works though the galleries. Shalini Sawhney of Guild Art Gallery, who was also a friend and mentor, corroborates this view. “Kavas was one of the rare collectors who observed the professional ethics of collecting and supported the gallery system,” she says. “He never, ever tried to get works directly from artists.”
Many of the works in Bharucha’s collection have a compelling story behind their acquisition. The collector relished telling his favorite stories any number of times, including one that involved Jogen Chowdhury. He had once acquired a small work on paper by Jogen Chowdhury of a wilted flower with the full date inscribed next to the artist’s signature. Many years later, Bharucha came upon a similar work on paper by the artist of a flower in full bloom, dated just a few days earlier to the one he owned. Convinced it was a depiction of the same flower by the artist just days apart, Bharucha was relentless in his pursuit of the latter work until it was securely in his collection. “When he wanted something,” says Khorshed, “he just had to have it.”
Bharucha, like most collectors in Mumbai, ran into storage problems for his voluminous collection. Although a small fraction of his collection is hung up on his walls at home, Bharucha still had a remarkable mental database of every work in his collection, the date of its purchase and its provenance. Nonetheless, his wife Khorshed inventoried the collection during his lifetime; she continues to be its faithful custodian. When asked if she had plans to carry forward the legacy of her husband, Khorshed admitted candidly, “It was something we did together.” Without the driving force, she added, “the joy has gone out of it for me”.
As Managing Director of Color-Chem (a position he had held since 1995), Bharucha sat on the boards of several important chemical companies in India. Despite the demands of his profession, art was a way of life. He spent most of his weekends and leisure time browsing at galleries, always eager for new discoveries and opportunities to add to his expanding collection. When Bharucha retired in 2006 just a year before his death, he planned to make a vocation out of his life-long hobby. He founded Capital Art Advisory Private Ltd, a market research and consultancy firm for art, with other prominent art collectors on the board of directors. Sadly, Bharucha was never to embark on the project. His unexpected death on August 24 left the Indian art world to mourn the loss of an exceptional collector and dedicated patron.
The Bharuchas’ son, Arish, who graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2006 is currently working at an international law firm in England, will eventually inherit the collection. Arish admits that while he is sentimentally attached to his father’s collection, he is not sure if he has inherited the “collecting bug”. “I think that Indian art (even after the credit crunch) is very expensive now,” he says. “I do not have the kind of confidence in my own taste that Dad had or the courage and ability to continuously buy art and balance this with all the other inevitable expenses in life.” He adds, “Also, we have such a wonderful collection already and no place to show it!”
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